President Donald Trump: The Thread

[bmags]

Bannon's being front-and-center in his administration is what makes it a hell of a lot harder to simply dismiss as an honest mistake. When you put a white nationalist in as your chief policy adviser, you don't get the benefit of the doubt when you "forget" to mention the Jews when talking about the holocaust.

 

I would have thought honest mistake up until Spicer kept defending it. Like, why?

[Soxbadger]

What do people think of this whole "holocaust" controversy? I actually side with Trump on this. He didn't single out any group, but I didn't think there was anything horrible or malicious around his use of words. This is what I think is dangerous about how Trump's detractor's are taking things. If you complain about every little thing, including things, like this, which I generally believe to be small (of course I'd like to think I'm rationale and could be delusional instead) then you start to get people who maybe aren't as logical / rational who look at the media and say, if they are going to complain about every little thing, then it is the old "boy who cried" wolf and you basically are just hammering a person and people stop believing everything (which is the wrong answer).

 

Its strange. I dont think Trump is anti semitic, his daughter is a Jew, his son in law is a Jew, his grandchildren are Jews.

 

That being said, he seems to be surrounded by people who may be. I think a lot of the concern is that Trump just doesnt understand the people he aligned with to become President.

[shakes]

Something else that's not getting a lot of attention thanks to the Muslim Ban stuff is that Trump filed for candidacy in the 2020 election the day he was inaugurated. That's highly unusual, and it brings up all sorts of questions about fundraising/bribing and potentially how non-profits are allowed to go after him as President vs. as a "candidate"

 

 

This should not be overlooked. He can now, and is likely already, raising money from PACs essentially for propaganda. As a candidate he is allowed to do that and there really aren't guidelines for what the message can be. So, ads can air pushing his policies or spreading information in areas he deems important to upcoming elections. He can now do this for his entire time in office. He filed 5 hours after his inauguration.

[RockRaines]

Its strange. I dont think Trump is anti semitic, his daughter is a Jew, his son in law is a Jew, his grandchildren are Jews.

 

That being said, he seems to be surrounded by people who may be. I think a lot of the concern is that Trump just doesnt understand the people he aligned with to become President.

His father was arrested at a KKK rally. So he has SOME prejudice in his upbringing

[Balta1701]

What do people think of this whole "holocaust" controversy? I actually side with Trump on this. He didn't single out any group, but I didn't think there was anything horrible or malicious around his use of words. This is what I think is dangerous about how Trump's detractor's are taking things. If you complain about every little thing, including things, like this, which I generally believe to be small (of course I'd like to think I'm rationale and could be delusional instead) then you start to get people who maybe aren't as logical / rational who look at the media and say, if they are going to complain about every little thing, then it is the old "boy who cried" wolf and you basically are just hammering a person and people stop believing everything (which is the wrong answer).

The problem I saw is that his language was right out of holocaust denial. The holocaust deniers loved it and jumped on it. Specifically the version I read praised Donald Trump for not falling in with the Jewish "Science Fiction" of gas chambers and ovens (that was from stormfront).

 

They've adopted that coded language specifically to get that reaction from people like you - the "oh it's no big deal", so that they can build their setup behind the scenes without being challenged. That's why the ADL fights this every single time - they want to leave the door slammed shut. They want people to remember that systematically trying to kill a group of people on an industrial scale because of who they are is something that we had never seen.

Edit: here's the specific statement by the ADL.

[shakes]

Its strange. I dont think Trump is anti semitic, his daughter is a Jew, his son in law is a Jew, his grandchildren are Jews.

 

That being said, he seems to be surrounded by people who may be. I think a lot of the concern is that Trump just doesnt understand the people he aligned with to become President.

 

Before running for office he wasn't against abortion, even supported right to choose charities and events, and showed support for gay rights. I truly think he doesn't care strongly about these issues, so he just listens to his advisers and adopts their stances, which should scare everyone.

[Balta1701]

other subject - who was it here who repeatedly said that LGBTQ people had nothing to fear from Donald Trump and Mike Pence because he hadn't campaigned on hating them as hard as he did his hatred for Islam?

 

That appears to have bought an extra 5-6 days, per press reports of what's coming.

[RockRaines]

Before running for office he wasn't against abortion, even supported right to choose charities and events, and showed support for gay rights. I truly think he doesn't care strongly about these issues, so he just listens to his advisers and adopts their stances, which should scare everyone.

He's a Bannon puppet at this point. We are going to be led by white supremacists and crooked former executives. Thats just the reality of the situation.

[caulfield12]

Democrats are going to be too busy telling each other how great they are and taking selfies at protests to bother asking people in the rust belt for their votes. They're gonna get rolled again and ask themselves how on earth it could have happened. "Trump was so evil, didn't you see us on TV and social media telling you so?" There was a moment of clarity for about 48 hours after the result of the election dropped where everyone seemed to understand that the identity politics and political correctness of the left alienated the traditional bedrock of their party.

 

Now were back at it again, having a level 10 freakout over Trump resurrecting Obama's old policies. Protesting on the streets of cities like Seattle, the poster child for "I like people who aren't white to be on my TV, not in my neighborhood", accomplishes nothing. In a way it helps Trump, because nothing grinds the gears of the working poor more than bougie liberals LARPing as activists while ignoring issues that have been brooding in the belly of this country since the 70's.

 

The election flipped because of essentially 38,000 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, that had they gone away from Trump, would have still given the election to Clinton. With the decided advantage of the FBI letter and Russian intervention, it was nevertheless a razor-thin margin, not to mention the 2.9 million spread in the popular vote.

 

If you still think Trump would win again were another election to be held...well, good luck.

 

If even 20-25% of those Republicans who voted Trump disagree with his core values of building the wall, immigration bans (when we're a 99.2% immigrant country, other than Native Americans), government intervention and regulation of trade (protectionism always leads to higher consumer prices and stifled innovation), persecution of all non-white non-Christian males, complete indifference about balancing the budget....it won't even be close.

 

You're also not taking into account the many African-American (stung by the Clintons, loyal to Obama) and young people (Sanders) who sat this one out. Hispanic-Americans who watching a Cabinet without Representation among 22 posts for the first time in 30 years won't sit out, either, assuming Trump can't possibly win. In addition, the GOP had huge numbers of "late breakers" for reasons outlined above.

 

And then you want to see MOST of the women in the U.S. engaged when they try to push through a Supreme Court justice who wants to reverse Roe v. Wade?

 

This won't even last until 2018 at the rate egregious mistakes are being made on a daily basis.

Edited January 30, 2017 by caulfield12

[bmags]

other subject - who was it here who repeatedly said that LGBTQ people had nothing to fear from Donald Trump and Mike Pence because he hadn't campaigned on hating them as hard as he did his hatred for Islam?

 

That appears to have bought an extra 5-6 days, per press reports of what's coming.

 

Mary Emily O'Hara on twitter saying WH pulling back for now on new exec order.

[Big Hurtin]

Scary stuff, if true.

 

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-bal...91d5#.t55b99uvi

 

 

[caulfield12]

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[Con te Giolito]

The election flipped because of essentially 38,000 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, that had they gone away from Trump, would have still given the election to Clinton. With the decided advantage of the FBI letter and Russian intervention, it was nevertheless a razor-thin margin, not to mention the 2.9 million spread in the popular vote.

 

If you still think Trump would win again were another election to be held...well, good luck.

 

If even 20-25% of those Republicans who voted Trump disagree with his core values of building the wall, immigration bans (when we're a 99.2% immigrant country, other than Native Americans), government intervention and regulation of trade (protectionism always leads to higher consumer prices and stifled innovation), persecution of all non-white non-Christian males, complete indifference about balancing the budget....it won't even be close.

 

You're also not taking into account the many African-American (stung by the Clintons, loyal to Obama) and young people (Sanders) who sat this one out. Hispanic-Americans who watching a Cabinet without Representation among 22 posts for the first time in 30 years won't sit out, either, assuming Trump can't possibly win. In addition, the GOP had huge numbers of "late breakers" for reasons outlined above.

 

And then you want to see MOST of the women in the U.S. engaged when they try to push through a Supreme Court justice who wants to reverse Roe v. Wade?

 

This won't even last until 2018 at the rate egregious mistakes are being made on a daily basis.

This was basically, though obviously not exactly, what was being said in October. Reminds me of that now infamous quote from Chuck Schumer (? may have been someone else) who said that for every one vote lost in rural Pennsylvania the Democrats would pick up two in the Philadelphia suburbs. It didn't happen, Trump gained on both fronts. He beat Romney's total in Pennsylvania by almost 300,000. Every dumb comment or outlandish policy position that was supposed to doom him with the Republican base fell flat, and now that he is fulfilling campaign promises at a rate I have never seen from any president you think he's losing their support? No way.

 

He was elected to do this. The wall, the expansion of Obama's policies regarding refugees in MENA*...this is his mandate. The courts are going to walk back some of it (mainly the religious part) but the core idea that refugees will not be coming the USA is going to stick. For at least four, and I think unless Democrats buck up and get their s*** together eight, years this is just the reality of the situation. Honestly, that is not some colossal human rights violation or Hitleresque movement. Europe is in demographic crisis right now, I can fully understand both sides of the refugee argument.

 

*this is a difficult point to refute. The Trump Admin got the list of seven countries directly from the Obama Admin's concern list. The ban itself is clearly modeled after the 2011 Iraqi ban. I said Trump resurrected Obama's policy earlier, that was a bit much, expanding is probably the right word to describe what is happening. He is expanding not only in scope but also in intensity.

[southsider2k5]

Is the bit about Merrick Garland being the judge with jurisdiction in these cases true?

[caulfield12]

Scary stuff, if true.

 

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-bal...91d5#.t55b99uvi

 

The free media is going to hammer away at this and not releasing his taxes (there's already a Tax Day protest scheduled for April 15th if he's still in office)...if you follow the trail, that would mean 19.5% went from Qatar and Glencore, which would amount to about $10 billion, or a roughly twice most estimated values of Trump's net worth.

http://www.forbes.com/companies/rosneft/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosneft

 

 

The stake was sold for 10.2 billion euros to a Singapore investment vehicle that Rosneft said was a 50/50 joint venture between Qatar and the Swiss oil trading firm Glencore.

 

But important facts about the deal either have not been disclosed, cannot be determined solely from public records, or appear to contradict the straightforward official account of the stake being split 50/50 by Glencore and the Qataris.

 

For one: Glencore contributed only 300 million euros of equity to the deal, less than 3 percent of the purchase price, which it said in a statement on Dec. 10 had bought it an "indirect equity interest" limited to just 0.54 percent of Rosneft.

 

 

I think between Singapore, the Qatari government and Glencore/Switzerland...for Trump to have been gifted that much money by Putin would be a conspiracy involving so many parties it would be nearly impossible to keep quiet.

 

 

 

 

Finally, I want to highlight a story that many people haven’t noticed. On Wednesday, Reuters reported (in great detail) how 19.5% of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, has been sold to parties unknown. This was done through a dizzying array of shell companies, so that the most that can be said with certainty now is that the money “paying” for it was originally loaned out to the shell layers by VTB (the government’s official bank), even though it’s highly unclear who, if anyone, would be paying that loan back; and the recipients have been traced as far as some Cayman Islands shell companies.

 

Why is this interesting? Because the much-maligned Steele Dossier (the one with the golden showers in it) included the statement that Putin had offered Trump 19% of Rosneft if he became president and removed sanctions. The reason this is so interesting is that the dossier said this in July, and the sale didn’t happen until early December. And 19.5% sounds an awful lot like “19% plus a brokerage commission.”

 

Conclusive? No. But it raises some very interesting questions for journalists to investigate.

[caulfield12]

This was basically, though obviously not exactly, what was being said in October. Reminds me of that now infamous quote from Chuck Schumer (? may have been someone else) who said that for every one vote lost in rural Pennsylvania the Democrats would pick up two in the Philadelphia suburbs. It didn't happen, Trump gained on both fronts. He beat Romney's total in Pennsylvania by almost 300,000. Every dumb comment or outlandish policy position that was supposed to doom him with the Republican base fell flat, and now that he is fulfilling campaign promises at a rate I have never seen from any president you think he's losing their support? No way.

 

He was elected to do this. The wall, the expansion of Obama's policies regarding refugees in MENA*...this is his mandate. The courts are going to walk back some of it (mainly the religious part) but the core idea that refugees will not be coming the USA is going to stick. For at least four, and I think unless Democrats buck up and get their s*** together eight, years this is just the reality of the situation. Honestly, that is not some colossal human rights violation or Hitleresque movement. Europe is in demographic crisis right now, I can fully understand both sides of the refugee argument.

 

*this is a difficult point to refute. The Trump Admin got the list of seven countries directly from the Obama Admin's concern list. The ban itself is clearly modeled after the 2011 Iraqi ban. I said Trump resurrected Obama's policy earlier, that was a bit much, expanding is probably the right word to describe what is happening. He is expanding not only in scope but also in intensity.

 

 

Except there has never been an act of domestic terrorism in the US committed by refugees from any of those countries. Zero. Ever. Nada.

 

Why not Saudia Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, UAE, Libya? We can trace lots of terrorism and its principal funding to those places. Not to mention Qatar and Bahrain.

 

If you're actually correct, then 50% of America is afraid of itself, as we are all immigrants. Or simply afraid of non-white, non-Christian immigrants. Our ancestors once were first-generation at Ellis Island at some point...are we not???

 

At any rate, I believe the number of those living in fear (mostly white males with lower levels of education) to be closer to 25%, so we'll just have to agree to disagree as there's no quantitative proof available to settle it.

 

The fact of the matter is that you can't go through any Silicon Valley tech start-up since 1994 and find a list of founders that's not 1/4th to 1/3rd immigrants. Where do you think America will get its future job/economic growth if not through properly-vetted immigration and the high tech industry? Right now, only Peter Thiel is on Trump's side. He's going to need more cooperation than that if he wants to make any progress.

 

 

As far as the European crisis goes, Trump might be forcing them to unite and rally together...if Merkel loses in Germany and le Pen's party wins in France, sure, but that's still far from the likeliest outcome barring another major terrorist attack in the heart of Europe.

Edited January 31, 2017 by caulfield12

[RockRaines]

The election flipped because of essentially 38,000 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, that had they gone away from Trump, would have still given the election to Clinton. With the decided advantage of the FBI letter and Russian intervention, it was nevertheless a razor-thin margin, not to mention the 2.9 million spread in the popular vote.

 

If you still think Trump would win again were another election to be held...well, good luck.

 

If even 20-25% of those Republicans who voted Trump disagree with his core values of building the wall, immigration bans (when we're a 99.2% immigrant country, other than Native Americans), government intervention and regulation of trade (protectionism always leads to higher consumer prices and stifled innovation), persecution of all non-white non-Christian males, complete indifference about balancing the budget....it won't even be close.

 

You're also not taking into account the many African-American (stung by the Clintons, loyal to Obama) and young people (Sanders) who sat this one out. Hispanic-Americans who watching a Cabinet without Representation among 22 posts for the first time in 30 years won't sit out, either, assuming Trump can't possibly win. In addition, the GOP had huge numbers of "late breakers" for reasons outlined above.

 

And then you want to see MOST of the women in the U.S. engaged when they try to push through a Supreme Court justice who wants to reverse Roe v. Wade?

 

This won't even last until 2018 at the rate egregious mistakes are being made on a daily basis.

A lot if not all of those "flipped votes" are having serious buyers remorse right now. They didnt think he would do any of the crazy stuff he ran on as a platform and they wanted anyone but Hillary. Now that he is actually going through with his horrific xenophobic s*** he is going to be left with the alt-right and the uneducated, lower class base. Once they get f***ed by his economic staff and policies its going to be VERY easy for someone to beat him in 4 years. Well as long as its not a Clinton.

[RockRaines]

I'll add he has a huge opening/opportunity to grab some base and have some staying power if he can continue to grow the economy. If he does something that benefits the fiscal conservative base, that will go a long way.

[caulfield12]

At least three top national security officials — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Rex Tillerson, who is awaiting confirmation to lead the State Department — have told associates they were not aware of details of directive until around the time Trump signed it. Leading intelligence officials were also left largely in the dark, according to U.S. officials.

 

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker (and interviewed for Secretary of State), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, said that despite White House assurances that congressional leaders were consulted, he learned about the order in the media.

 

The fallout was immediate: friction between Trump and his top advisers and a rush by the Pentagon to seek exemptions to the policy. The White House approach also sparked an unusually public clash between a president and the civil servants tasked with carrying out his policy.

 

A large group of American diplomats circulated a memo voicing their opposition to the order, which temporarily halted the entire U.S. refugee program and banned all entries from seven Muslim-majority nations for 90 days. In a startlingly combative response, White House spokesman Sean Spicer challenged those opposed to the measure to resign.

 

"They should either get with the program or they can go," Spicer said.

 

The blowback underscored Trump's tenuous relationship with his own national security advisers, many of whom he met for the first time during the transition, as well as with the government bureaucracy he now leads. While Trump outlined his plan for temporarily halting entry to the U.S. from countries with terror ties during the campaign, the confusing way in which it finally was crafted stunned some who have joined his team.

 

Mattie, who stood next to Trump during Friday's signing ceremony, is said to be particularly incensed. A senior U.S. official said Mattis, along with Joint Chiefs Chairman Joseph Dunford, was aware of the general concept of Trump's order but not the details. Tillerson has told the president's political advisers that he was baffled over not being consulted on the substance of the order.

 

[caulfield12]

Now Trump will fire Obama's Attorney General and the battle over the Jeff Sessions appointment really intensifies...but still unlikely the GOP senators would block him. No way to filibuster it.

 

Between that and SC nomination fight starting tmrw...uncharted waters in terms of the Constitution (if Sessions somehow wasn't approved or it continues to be delayed past the end of this week) and legal battles to sort this out somehow.

[caulfield12]

As predicted...

 

 

President Donald Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates Monday night for "refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States," the White House said.

 

"(Yates) has betrayed the Department of Justice," the White House statement said.

Edited January 31, 2017 by caulfield12

[Big Hurtin]

Cybersecurity EO expected to be signed tomorrow

 

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/...raft-of-the.pdf

 

 

Sigh, I remember being taught in school about the 3 branches of government.

 

 

 

[BigSqwert]

We're turned into a banana republic. Thank you to everyone who voted for this idiot.

[The Beast]

We're turned into a banana republic. Thank you to everyone who voted for this idiot.

I think he'll do just enough to get re-elected, thanks to his base that don't care about the facts and instead feed on the garbage he and Spicer spew on a daily basis. There's a lot of time to see what happens, but if the democrats don't do well in the 2018 midterms, it's going to be difficult to get him out of office in 2020. Plus, all presidents since Clinton have had two terms.

 

Also, what is Trump going to do for moderate college educated white guys like me?

Edited January 31, 2017 by New Era on South Side

[Big Hurtin]

We're turned into a banana republic. Thank you to everyone who voted for this idiot.

 

I'd just change the first word of the second sentence.